US president also says he will meet oil executives at White House on Friday to discuss Venezuela’s oil industry.
United States President Donald Trump has said he cancelled a second wave of attacks on Venezuela following “cooperation” from the South American nation.
The president said on Friday that Venezuela was releasing a large number of political prisoners as a sign of “seeking peace”, following last week’s US military operation to abduct President Nicolas Maduro.
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“This is a very important and smart gesture. The USA and Venezuela are working well together, especially as it pertains to rebuilding, in a much bigger, better, and more modern form, their oil and gas infrastructure,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“Because of this cooperation, I have cancelled the previously expected second Wave of Attacks, which looks like it will not be needed, however, all ships will stay in place for safety and security purpose,” his post added.
Trump’s comments come hours after he indicated in an interview on Fox News’s Hannity programme that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was coming to Washington next week, after previously dismissing the idea of working with her, saying that “she doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country”.
The Republican president, however, had told The New York Times on Wednesday that the US was “getting along very well” with the Venezuelan government, led by acting interim President Delcy Rodriguez.
During the Fox interview, Trump also said he would meet oil executives at the White House on Friday and that the oil companies would spend at least $100bn in Venezuela, which he repeated in his Truth Social post.
“At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” Trump wrote on his social media platform ahead of the gathering, where he was expected to convince the oil heads to support his plans in Venezuela.
The Trump administration has repeatedly said that it is running Venezuela, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Wednesday asserting that Washington will control the country’s oil industry “indefinitely”.
Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s deputy, has said that her government remains in charge, with the state-run oil firm saying only that it was in negotiations with the United States on oil sales.
US outlet NBC News reported that the heads of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips are expected at the White House meeting.
“It’s just a meeting to discuss, obviously, the immense opportunity that is before these oil companies right now,” Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday.
Chevron is the only US company that currently has a licence to operate in Venezuela. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips left the country in 2007, after refusing then-President Hugo Chavez’s demand that they give up a majority stake in local operations to the government.
Sanctioned by Washington since 2019, Venezuela sits on about a fifth of the world’s oil reserves and was once a major crude supplier to the United States.
But it produced only about 1 percent of the world’s total crude output in 2024, according to OPEC, having been hampered by years of underinvestment, sanctions and embargoes.
Trump sees the country’s massive oil reserves as a windfall in his fight to further lower US domestic fuel prices, a major political issue.
But he could face an uphill task convincing the major US oil companies to invest in Venezuela due to uncertainty about governance post-Maduro, security and the enormous expense of restoring production facilities.
